The day we...

...officially dedicated Little Lady to Jesus.

{If you are interested in the reason and meaning behind this event you can read more about it here.}

The Sequel: 6.5 Months

Pregnancy Highlights:


How Far Along: 27 Weeks


Size of baby: 14 inches from head to heal and 2+lbs!


Total Weight Gain/Loss: Gained 7lbs


Maternity Clothes: Oh yeah. Lots of skirts and dresses on these hot days!


Gender: It's a surprise!!


Movement: Oh yes! Almost all the time but especially when I lay on my side.


Sleep: This depends on Little Lady... but I have started waking up even if she doesn't just to go to the bathroom.

Symptoms: Crazy dreams, heartburn and reflux, feeling winded easily, frequent bathroom breaks.


What I miss: Being able to sleep on my stomach! I missed this really bad when I was pregnant with Little Lady and it's starting to be the same this time. My hips start hurting after sleeping on only my sides.


Cravings: Not too many specific cravings anymore and I'm so grateful to be able to eat just about anything I'm hungry for with this pregnancy, unlike the first one.

Best Moment this week: Little Lady turning 1! And realizing that we have less than 99 days too go! We are on the downhill now! :D


What I am looking forward to: Finishing up clearing out the soon-to-be second nursery so we can start prepping for The Sequel!!

My 1 year old

To my dearest and sweetest little girl,

You are growing and growing right before my eyes, but that hasn't seemed to change since the day you were born!

I am falling more in love {which I never dreamed could be possible!} with your adorable little personality every single moment I'm with you.

Your curiosity seems to grow with your height and your love of people is become more and more prominent. When ever I take you to the park or out and about you love to say "Hi" to everyone and aren't afraid to walk right up to them. No one is a stranger to you. As much as I love how outgoing you are, we will be learning how to take caution with people we don't know, but I want to be careful not to frighten your desire to be around people out of you either. It's how God made you and it's wonderful!

You walk everywhere and you talk all the time.
You still love flowers, dirt, plants and trees.
I think you would stay out side all day long if you possibly could!
We have both enjoyed these summer months of being able to get out and enjoy the outdoors together.

You are becoming more and more independent.
Once we show you how to do something you are determined to do it yourself.
You love to imitate what we do or say. Even things we don't really want you to imitate...

You are such a ham and you love to entertain us.
If you do something that gets a reaction out of us, you will repeat it over and over again!
Mostly facial expressions. You have SO many :D

You love to dance to music. Any music.
If you hear music playing, even if it's a toy making the noise,
you stop what you are doing so you can move your arms and feet!

You are already starting to say "words".
They don't always sound like the word you are intending, but you know what you mean.
I'm beginning to figure it out.

Words you say:
Dada
Baba {bottle}
Lu {balloon}
Hi
Hot

You love your stuffed animals.
I mean really love them.
You will pick them up and hug them and then carry them with you where ever you go.
No matter what you are doing or if you are upset about something,
if we bring you one of your stuffed animals, you light up!
You don't have a favorite one yet. You just love them all!

Most nights you wake up once, sometimes twice.
A lot of times you get yourself back to sleep with in minutes.
Other times I come in to calm you down {if you wake up crying}
 and help soothe you back to sleep.
You are still taking a morning and an afternoon nap,
but I think that may be changing in the near future.

You love to eat and you will eat just about what ever I give you.
You prefer to feed yourself finger foods rather than being spoon fed.
You still love fruit. Especially lemons or any citrusy foods.

This first year has gone by fast, as I'm sure they all will.
I've enjoyed every single minute of it. Even the moments I didn't enjoy at the time.
You have changed my life. Forever.
And for that I can never be thankful enough.
God truly knew how to bless me and make my life fuller when He gave me you.

I love you with all of my heart, sweetheart.
Love,
Mommy

Happy Birthday, Little Lady!

That's exactly what it was, a happy day. We had a wonderful time with family and friends celebrating our baby girl's first year of life!

I would say that the birthday party was a huge success! We did an open house style so people would feel free to come and go as they could. We loved seeing everyone that was able to make it and we missed all of those who weren't able to.

{The girl LOVES lemons! And I know they aren't good for her teeth, we limit them. But it was her birthday!!}

My mom and I spent the day before baking and getting prepared for the party. I think the decorations, cake and party favors turned out darling! Stud Muffin did a wonderful job helping with the decorations and taking pictures to capture our day.

{The party favors were sugar cookies on a stick! They turned out so cute :D}

Little Lady soaked up the attention like a champ. She truly is a people person and loves to be where the people are, see what they are doing and even just chat and give hugs. It was so cute to watch her make the rounds and tell all of her guests "HI!" with her big cheesy grin, often to be followed by a big hug and snuggle!

{The sign on our front door}

She did great opening and even sharing her gifts with her friend, Baby E! I was really impressed and love to see her generous heart at such a young age. I hope I can help encourage and teach her to be generous with her things, all the blessing that she's been give from God.

{She had just finished playing peek-a-boo with the bag}

Stud Muffin worked on and perfected a video mixed with slideshows to music and home videos of Little Lady's first year. It happens to be an hour long! I think I'll post it and anyone who wants to watch can, if you don't want to that's fine too! But it is adorable and really doesn't feel like an hour as it keeps you entertained.

After gift opening we moved right along to the cake festivities as Little Lady was fading fast at that point.

Nana made her a strawberry cake with pink frosting! I think she really enjoyed it but kept looking at her observers like "Why is everyone looking at me?" She was pretty cute, as always! Then it was time for a quick bath...

Not too long after that Little Lady made a crash landing and went to bed for two hours!! When she woke up we had a BBQ dinner with family before we were back to a near empty house again.

She ended up staying up until 9p before she slept the whole night through til 7a!!! {Yay, sleep for mama too!!}

We had a wonderful day and plan to spend today just resting and enjoying Nana's visit. :D

Here are some more wonderful pictures from the party:

Squeaky Shoes

A video taken yesterday of Little Lady walking and talking! She is wearing her shoes that squeak that she got from Nana a while ago {they finally fit!}.

Squeaky Shoes 2 from Katie B on Vimeo.

And another one... I'll warn you this one is longer and probably boring unless you are grandparents! Ha!

Little Lady's Squeaky Shoes from Katie B on Vimeo.

Getting back to the every days

Last week we were getting back to the usual everyday life of being home. Our vacation was wonderful and we throughly enjoyed it!

It's always nice to get home after a long vacation too. Especially this time. We had our house painted while we were away! {Actually we had our house started last fall but after a few technical difficulties and a winter season, we had to push it off.} We decided to go with a different painter and Stud Muffin worked something out with a guy he works with. He gave us a great deal and is donating the profits to a charity ice hockey tournament that Stud Muffin is playing in this weekend.

{The same tournament that I was at watching him play last year when I started early labor. He didn't get to play the second day of games because we were at the hospital waiting for E to be born! She was born just half way through a game he would have been playing in!}

Any way, the house was supposed  to be painted the weekend before we went on vacation, but due to weather we were postponed again! Stud Muffin and I were both worried we come home from vacation to find it still unpainted...

BEFORE:

You can see in this picture that it had been started to be primed, and it sat that way all through winter and spring...

AFTER:

The color is a little brighter than I was picturing but he did an excellent job and we are very happy with it! Now we can get to work on trimming back the landscaping... thats for another day!

So, back to last week...

It actually wasn't too eventful. Just settling back into being home. We had our Fruitful Heritage group from church, which is open to all new and expecting mamas! Another day I took Little Lady to the Children's Museum, she loved that! She's so social and loves going up to the other little kiddos and says "Hi" in an over enthusiastic voice. They usually just stare at her. It's really the cutest thing ever!

The weekend was quite uneventful as Stud Muffin and I both had to work.

But this week, I have a list to tackle as we get ready for party guests at the house to celebrate Little Lady's FIRST birthday on Sunday! Nana will be here on Friday and we will be busy on Saturday baking and preparing. Saturday night is Little Lady's baby dedication and then Sunday we will be partying!!

On that note, I better get to work!

Vacation: The Weekend

Friday:
We went to Sea World! I think we were there 5-6 hrs. Little Lady did outstanding. She even sat through a couple shows! Ok, so she actually got her nap through one of them. :)

It was a great experience though and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

Watching the dolphins while they swam underwater. 

Playing with Opa {my dad} while we waited for the show to start.

Probably my favorite show of the whole park, Shamu!

Truly amazing creatures!

Playing with Oma.

Saturday:

The guys had another fun day of SCUBA diving off of Catalina Island. They have a dive park there that is set up and blocked off specifically for divers to enjoy! I heard stories of huge crab and lobster, they really enjoyed the day.

So that left the girls to fend for ourselves! 

We first went to the children's museum, Pennypickle's Workshop. It was such a neat little place!

It was set up as a professor/scientist's house with quite a few different rooms. It was as if he had conducted all these experiments and left notes written on the walls for the kids to try them out as well. 

She loved this piano! It was wired to other instruments that would play when certain keys on the piano where hit.

If she were a little bit older she probably would have gotten more out of it, but there where buttons and switches and gadgets all over the place. Plus there wasn't anything in there she couldn't safely touch! 

Here she is dancing to some music.

She fell in LOVE with this jukebox! With the colors and the bubbles going up the side, and of course the music!

A hot air balloon basket that you could get in a play around.

And after all that hard work play, we were ready for lunch!!

Sunday:

Our 4th of July was relaxing and I wouldn't have it any other way! It was a great way to have to end our lovely vacation.

We woke up late, even Little Lady, and then headed out to Ihop from some breakfast! Yum. Little Lady is so social and loves to yell "HI" at every person that walks by and if anyone will stop and give her some attention, well they are her new BFF!! She isn't shy. At all.

After a delicious late breakfast and an afternoon nap we headed to the club house for some fun in the sun! I was surprised that it was pretty bare from being a holiday, and a warm sunny one at that. But we weren't complaining to have the spray park all to ourselves again. :D

Daddy enjoyed making his own splash going down the slides at the pool!

After drying off we started the grill and enjoyed a delicious summer dinner of beer brats, potato salad, beans, grilled corn-on-the-cob and ice cream for dessert! Yummy in my tummy :D

Thank you Opa and Oma for the wonderful vacation and visit! We enjoyed our time as a family and getting to spend time with you! We look forward to the next visit with great anticipation. Much love.